Katrina

The city is flooded. Levees demolished. Water rising. Homes under water. Businesses washed out. Families split. Looters taking violently. Lives lost.

One of the worst natural disasters to hit our country in this lifetime has just happened in the south. New Orleans, a city of bright color and wild culture, has been washed away entirely. People have lost everything, in some cases their lives. This is a time when our nation should be banding together to pray for and send aid to these people. However, it seems to me that life continues unaffected here. Flags are waving at full-mast. Attitudes and demeanors are normal.

After the Tsunami last December, things changed. Outreach poured from the pockets of the American people. We walked through our days stunned by pictures and video of the devastating damage, glued to news reports. While the death toll from Hurricane Katrina is not even in the same world as that from the Tsunami, the people of the Gulf Coast have lost everything much in the same way as those in the Pacific.

Repairing the levees is an engineering nightmare. It is going to be a huge task to figure out both how to stop the water from coming in, and how to build new structures. The city will be without electricity for a long while. If the flood water rises much more, the entire public water system will be wiped out. The impact on US oil production is going to be dramatic. And, it's possible that hundreds are dead.

This disaster is all I can think about today. I'm hurting for all those people who's lives are destroyed. I'm hurting for those who couldn't (or didn't) evacuate and had to swim for their lives. I know this is another disaster in the list of disasters that have been plaguing our planet over the last 10 years or so. It seems that they're getting bigger, stronger, more destructive. I can't help but wonder if it's mother nature's way of getting rid of the parasite that's ruining her world.

For information on ways you can help go to the Red Cross.